"Finally, about claims ï¿½the science is settledï¿½ on global warming: ï¿½One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You donï¿½t know it.ï¿½ "

Next time we hear some Palo Alto global warming religionist claim that the "science is settled" , go to Loveland...he knows how bad that alarmist stuff can get, because he was once part of it.

This story contains 132 words.

If you are a paid subscriber, check to make sure you have
logged in.
Otherwise our system cannot recognize you as having full free access to our site.

If you are a paid print subscriber and haven't yet set up an online account,
click here
to get your online account activated.

Comments

Like this comment

Posted by Sean
a resident of Midtown
on Jun 24, 2012 at 8:19 am

"(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines.

As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can’t stand windmills at any price.”"

Posted by the kids owe US
a resident of Midtown
on Jun 24, 2012 at 8:43 am

Germany is up to 20% renewables and climbing. Saved the massive investment in new nukes, and saves the massive government subsidized cost associated with nuke end of life, shut down and storage. They've made it work, apparently we can't.

Massive investment in renewables, and switch over to cheap NG. Quit importing oil from the middle east, export our own oil at high prices.

"Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, “the problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.”"

Posted by the kids owe US
a resident of Midtown
on Jun 24, 2012 at 9:50 am

Sean:

Nah, gotta build some windmills and put up some solar panels.

That way, when the next couple generations are stuck footing the huge bill for the costs of warming, like putting up dykes around the Bay to combat sea level rise, they won't think we completely ignored the facts staring us in the face. When the waters rise, they're the ones to build a dyke to protect PA, that isn't much to ask. Though I gotta tell ya, when the rising Bay salt water gets into the Delta, that's an agriculture issue, besides flooding the 5 refineries up there. But that's their problem up there, and down the road.

Okay, technically it's north, so that's "up the road", but still down the road, but you get my drift.

Or we can do nothing - no windmill, no panels, and then they'll know we were complete morons for ignoring the obvious.

Compromise - let's do just enough to make it *look* good to future generations.

Either way, it's their problem. We've done enough for future generations. We can still claim the "science isn't settled". Good enough for me. I'v got my rose-tinted glasses on, and my tinfoil hat firmly in place. I'm gone in a couple decades, too.

Posted by the kids owe US
a resident of Midtown
on Jun 24, 2012 at 10:47 am

Lovelock is promoting a book coming out next year. Let's see what it says.

Lovelock is 92. He has said: “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”

That was ridiculous, of course; he was only 86 when he said that, Now? He now thinks he had been “extrapolating too far."

Duh.

Doesn't mean climate change isn't happening. It is.

Sean is great! The way he finds the silly articles that take Lovelock out of context is fabulous. Of course, Sean ignores Lovelock in the same interview: "Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I’m not a denier.” "

"He said human-caused carbon dioxide emissions were driving an increase in the global temperature..." Like most of the scientific world, of course.

"He said he still thought that climate change was happening, but that its effects would be felt farther in the future than he previously thought." Yup, he clearly was overboard earlier.

“We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit,” Lovelock said.

So what is it Sean? is Lovelock correct? Or not?

Or are you just cherry picking the statements of a 92 yr old that you like and ignoring the rest, along with facts as silly little things?

Sean (Gary) - ya can't have it both ways. Are you going to trumpet a few cherry-picked Lovelock quotes and ignore the rest, or is Lovelock an old man who may have been a little overboard?

Or is Lovelock a master promoter of a book coming out next year, using both the left and right wing blogs to do a masterful bit of PR for the book?

"He (Lovelock) responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they admit error, as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise his theories in the face of new evidence. Indeed, that’s how science advances."

Posted by the kids owe US
a resident of Midtown
on Jun 24, 2012 at 2:26 pm

"He (Lovelock) responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they admit error..."

Lovelock didn't say that in the interview.

He said MIGHT fear a loss... that's a double-maybe/kinda/sorta, you are stretching his possible meaning. He also has said that we're destroying the environment so fast that Gaia doesn't apply anymore.

Now you're into the whole fringe, tin foil hat, conjecture/conspiracy theory sphere that all the governments of the world are in a conspiracy about climate change. They're going to stop funding basic research, for some reason, if it agrees with the oil companies, who actually fund many politicians. Hmmm.

One world government, tri-lateral commission types about how we're all doomed because of secret powerful forces. Yet you believe the Koch brothers are funding all this nonsense for some reason other than making more than the $25 billion they already have.

Would have been interesting to see what those guys would have made of themselves, if daddy hadn't given them an oil company.

>He said MIGHT fear a loss... that's a double-maybe/kinda/sorta, you are stretching his possible meaning. He also has said that we're destroying the environment so fast that Gaia doesn't apply anymore.

I simply quoted from the report of the Toronto Sun (my origianl link). [Portion removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

One scientist says he doesn't know what the actual growth of global warming is. That's a far cry from saying it doesn't exist.

There are too many studies that confirm the change in sea temperature, the migration of animals to higher altitudes as the climate gets warmer, the melting of glaciers and southern an northern ice sheets, etc. to deny we are going through a climate change. It is similar to others that have occurred in the past tens of thousands of years. We just don't know when it will peak or when it will stop and reverse as it has done in the past.

This Logan's Run vision of the future – where we all live in "megacities to better manage dwindling resources – might not appeal to all, he admits. "But you don't even have to do the experiment. You only have to go to Singapore. You could not have chosen a worse climate in which to build a city. It's a swamp with temperatures in the 90s every day, and very humid. But it is one of the most successful cities in the world. It seems to me that they are treading the path that we are all going to go. It's so much cheaper to air-condition the cities and let Gaia take care of the world. It's a much better route to go than so-called 'sustainable development', which is meaningless drivel.""

He has been fired by reputable organization- and should be excluded from and further Federal grants.

Those who defend Peter H. Gleick -like you- are supporting fraud and theft in science

This will not stand.

Peter H. Gleick by his own admission is a criminal--he should be in Federal prison now - and as his case moves forward he may well spend the rest of his life in prison for interstate wire fraud felonies.

He also violated our local state senators law on internet identity theft--which also means a state prison term upon Peter H. Gleicks conviction.

Theft and fraud have no place in science-Peter H. Gleick has destroyed all credibility of his own research and anyone who tries to justify his confessed acts of theft and fraud.

“THE ARCTIC OCEAN IS WARMING UP, ICEBERGS ARE GROWING SCARCER AND IN SOME PLACES THE SEALS ARE FINDING THE WATER TOO HOT. REPORTS ALL POINT TO A RADICAL CHANGE IN CLIMATE CONDITIONS AND HITHERTO UNHEARD-OF TEMPERATURES IN THE ARCTIC ZONE. EXPEDITIONS REPORT THAT SCARCELY "ANY ICE HAS BEEN MET WITH AS FAR NORTH AS 81 DEGREES 29 MINUTES. GREAT MASSES OF ICE HAVE BEEN REPLACED BY MORAINES OF EARTH AND STONES, WHILE AT MANY POINTS WELL KNOWN GLACIERS HAVE ENTIRELY DISAPPEARED.”

—US WEATHER BUREAU, 1922

I always chuckle, when I see that one! I think Richard Lindzen was the one who brought it to our attention, although others have also brought it forward.

along with oceanographic sounding and temperature measurements.It was considered scientific enough to be including in an official U.S. report.

kids, you sound very defensive about the conditions in the arctic in 1922. Are you saying that the observers were liars? Or are you just concerned that it undermines your hysterical alarmism about impending doom, due to global warming?

Lovelock was wise enough, in his old age, to be open to actual obervations and measurments, thus he changed his views over gloom and doom.

Posted by the kids owe US
a resident of Midtown
on Jun 26, 2012 at 9:43 am

[Portion removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

You're sticking with REPORTS of fisherman as opposed to the PEER REVIEWED STUDIES of today's scientific community? A good example of why no one ever accuses the tinfoil hat climate change deniers of genius.

kids, speaking of denial: Are you saying that current scientists doubt that those reports, including a scientific expedition, along with testimony of a long-time fisherman with historical knowledge and stated by the U.S. Weather Dept., in a contemporary monthly report, are skeptical about the fact that the arctic was melting away in 1922?

[Portion removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language] I encourage everyone interested in the 1922 report to read my link from NOAA archives. It is a fact that the arctic was in a melting period, back then. Thus providing some real worry for the global warming hysteria crowd, because current arctic warming, to the degree that it exists, may simply be a natural variation, due to warmer than normal currents.

When Lovelock went your way, with all his hysteria and gloom and doom, you probably liked what he had to say; now that he has developed some wisdom, based on existing evidence, you claim that he is just an old man (suggesting that he can be ignored).

Oh, btw, I am not Gary. [Portion removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

The global warming hysteria is based, largely, on hysteria and grants. The 1922 report is a dagger that threatens those dependent on both. I have a simple question: Who believes that the arctic was NOT melting in 1922? [Portion removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

Heartland LOVES to use leaked documents. They still have stolen documents as an upload on their own site!

"Six leading climate scientists released an “open letter to the Heartland Institute”

They said: “We know what it feels like to have private information stolen and posted online via illegal hacking. It happened to climate researchers in 2009 and again in 2011. Personal emails were culled through and taken out of context before they were posted online.

“In 2009, the Heartland Institute was among the groups that spread false allegations about what these stolen emails said.

“Despite multiple independent investigations, which demonstrated that allegations against scientists were false, the Heartland Institute continued to attack scientists based on the stolen emails. “When more stolen emails were posted online in 2011, the Heartland Institute again pointed to their release and spread false claims about scientists.

“So although we can agree that stealing documents and posting them online is not an acceptable practice, we would be remiss if we did not point out that the Heartland Institute has had no qualms about utilising and distorting emails stolen from scientists.” "

>Comparing anecdotal reports from 1920's fisherman and seal hunters (which you call a dagger - here: Web Link) to modern, peer reviewed science, which you refer to as "hysteria", is ludicrous.

Would modern, peer-reviewed scientists, ignore eye witness reports from 1922? Temperature intersects of the Gulf Stream by an established government scientist? In fact, which modern scientists, with knowledge of global warming, are denying the 1922 report?

I will just posit that the 1922 report is true, despite the denials of "kids" (and his fellow true believers/deniers). So, what does this mean? Was it a rare aberation? Natural cycles? CO2 increase (despite the fact that CO2 levels were, presumably, lower back then). Solar flares? Increased penetration of a warmer Gulf Steam? If I had to take a guess, from the available evidence, I would guess the latter (Gulf Stream).

BTW, "peer review" is a highly political game, based on the funding stream (grants). I would probably believe an experienced fisherman, with over 50 years of observation, than a "scientist" with skin in the game. I say this as one who reviewed grants at NIH, back in the day. [Portion removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]